


let's take this mess and make a home

by NoisyNoiverns



Category: Mass Effect (Comics), Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Reapers, Children, Domestic Fluff, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10863999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/pseuds/NoisyNoiverns
Summary: Eleven years since Shanxi. Six since getting married. Two since becoming a father. Some mornings, the passage of time takes Desolas by surprise.





	let's take this mess and make a home

**Author's Note:**

> For the M.E. Flash Fanwork prompt "what might have been." Title comes from the song "Cinderblock Garden" by All Time Low.

“Daddy.”

Desolas grunted and snuggled deeper into his pillows.

“Daddy.”

There was a tug on the blankets. He simply curled closer to the mound of heat on his other side.

_“Daddy!”_

He finally groaned and rolled over, prying his eyes open to see a small, pale gold face pouting at him from next to his chrono. _“Daddy,”_ his daughter said, sounding like she was trying to growl but hadn’t mastered it yet, “I’m _hungry.”_

He flicked one mandible and grumbled. “Mommy sleeps closer to the door. Why didn’t you wake her?”

Taniria stuck a finger in her mouth. “Mommy said to wake _you.”_

He blinked slowly, then turned over to look at his mate beside him. “And you say _I’m_ lazy.”

Valis’s only response was an exaggerated snore, drawing a giggle out of Taniria. Desolas rolled his eyes, then hauled himself up into a sitting position, rolled his shoulders, and heaved a sigh. “Alright then, baby girl,” he said, looking over at his daughter. “How hungry are we talking here?”

She perked up immediately, giving a little bounce as she chirped, “Really!”

“Really hungry? Hungry enough for, I don’t know, say… pretaria?”

Taniria gasped, then nearly jumped in place as she squealed, “Yes! Yes, yes, Daddy, yes!”

He lifted his mandibles, but quickly dropped them again as a heavy weight landed in his lap. He glanced down to find Valis had dropped her arm over his waist and cracked open one eye. “Oh, so _now_ you’re awake,” he said, teasing without malice. “Make up your mind.”

Valis grumbled and headbutted his hip spur. “It’s the weekend, I get to sleep in. Just save me something, would you? You know my usual.”

He snorted and flicked his mandibles. “Sure, sure. I’ll take Bouncy out with me so you can get some rest.”

“Thanks, babe.” She yawned, then withdrew her arm and rolled over. “Don’t let her go out without shoes, it’s supposed to be boiling out today, and she doesn’t have tough enough skin to walk on hot sidewalks.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He leaned over to nuzzle the back of her neck, then finally looked back to Taniria, eyeing her pajamas. “Do you want to go to the store dressed like that?”

She blinked slowly, then looked down at herself, putting her hands on her exposed cowl as she inspected her faded Blasto shirt and pink pajama pants speckled with cartoony, smiling stars. After a minute’s deliberation, she looked back up at him, eyes wide and mandibles wibbling. “Can I?”

He considered, then sighed and shrugged. “It’s the weekend. Why not? Go get your shoes on, then.”

Taniria cheered and scrambled off, weaving around the end of the bed and leaping over pieces of armor Desolas had yet to clean. Desolas shook his head. “I don’t know where she gets it.”

 _“I_ do,” Valis groused.

He snorted and got out of bed. “I _meant_ the being a morning person part,” he huffed at her. Once he’d straightened out his pants, he leaned back over the bed and arranged the blankets so Valis would stay warm without him, then planted a kiss on her temple. “Be back soon. I’ll get tea ready the way you like it, and you can put it on to boil when you get up.”

Valis purred, then snuggled deeper under the covers. “No rush,” came the muffled reply.

Desolas chuckled and rubbed her shoulder, then made for the door. “Taniria,” he called, trying to keep his voice down. “You can watch cartoons for a little bit before we leave, I have a couple things to do first.”

“Okay!” Taniria chirped back, and within seconds he heard the vidscreen hum to life.

A short laugh escaped him as he wandered to the kitchen. “You’re just like your uncle,” he mused, more to himself than to her. And it was true, really. Rambunctious and a bit too clever for her own good, Taniria was almost suspiciously close to the precocious little brother Desolas had taken in all those years ago. Her current shirt was a well-loved gift from him for her last birthday, which Saren had very nearly forgotten (she got _that_ from him, too). They even looked similar: the same skinny build, the same lively glint to their eyes, and, of course, the same distinctive Arterius zygomatic spines jutting out from their cheek ridges. There were only three main differences, those being that Saren had a crest, and Taniria had her mother’s plates and her father’s eyes. She was only two years old, and already Desolas was dreading the day she was smart enough to team up with her uncle against him.

 _Two years_ , whispered a thought at the back of his mind. _Is she really two already?_

He slowed a few paces from the kitchen table, putting a hand to his head. Spirits. It was getting easier than he’d ever thought it would be to understand all those phrases about time flying by. It felt like only yesterday he was holding her for the first time, and here she was, already two years old and singing along with the theme song to some inane cartoon about talking animals.

He shook his head and made for the cupboards. The kettle was still sitting out after being washed the day before, so he grabbed it as he walked past. “Tanni, sweetie, try to keep it down,” he reminded her, opening the cupboard with one hand and glancing through the boxes for Valis’s favored tea. “Mommy’s trying to sleep.”

“Okay. Sorry!”

The volume went down, and Desolas sighed to himself, reaching for the tea hiding behind the demipal he’d made last night after work. Just two years old. Her third birthday was only a few months away. It was an important year for turians, a quarter of the way to the almighty twelve, when they would be eligible to receive their markings. He’d have to remember to specify her age when he was arranging the party.

Of course, some part of his brain reminded him, when Taniria was three, it would be twelve years since Shanxi.

That thought stopped him in his tracks, hand barely a plate’s breadth from the little box of tikhar root tea. Had it been twelve years already? Twelve years since the humans had arrived on the scene, twelve years since Jack Harper and his cronies, twelve years since the cave collapse.

A shudder ran down his spine. He snatched up the box and nearly dropped it on the counter, knocking the cupboard door with his head to close it. The doctors had said Valis would never fully recover, and really, he didn’t doubt it. A cave had fallen on top of her, there was just no walking away from that. She’d been taking it in stride for the most part, adjusting to walking with a cane and learning tricks to work around the reduced peripherals and face-blindness and faltering memory. But every year, right around when the words “Relay 314 anniversary” started circulating in the news again, she got sullen, and not even his best efforts could pick up her mood.

He still hadn’t told her that while she’d been in the hospital, he and Saren had set to work tracking down Jack Harper and the other humans from the accident. It had just been to tie up loose ends – he’d gotten a bad feeling from Harper, and Saren had the resources and connections to make him go away forever. And sure, okay, part of it had been a “revenge thing,” as his little brother had so eloquently put it, trying to get back at the reason Valis was hurt. But then that damn manifesto had gotten published, and it suddenly got a whole lot bigger than just them. That had been when he’d backed off, let Saren take over the investigation. With one publication, it was very suddenly Spectre business. It had only occurred to him afterwards that the venture could very well have gotten him killed, and almost had on two occasions.

Twelve years since he’d almost died, and Valis had no idea.

“Daddy, are you done yet?”

Taniria’s plaintive cry jolted him out of his introspective trance. Realizing he’d been staring at the tea for a minute, he shook his head, then opened the box and pulled out a small handful of the herbal mix inside. "Almost, Tanni, be patient,” he called back. He exhaled sharply as he placed the herbs inside the kettle. Time just kept sneaking up on him, it seemed. It had been eleven years since Shanxi, almost twelve now. He and Valis had gotten married five years after that, so that was six years since that. And two, nearly three years since they’d become parents.

He took a deep breath, put the kettle in the sink, and turned on the faucet to start filling it with water. Right. He’d almost died, but he hadn’t, and time marched on. Saren was continuing the hunt for Harper with the Council’s assent, Valis spent less time being surly about Shanxi every year, and he’d been pleasantly surprised to find that he didn’t mind his new lifestyle one bit.

And his daughter was waiting for him to finish in the kitchen so she could have something sweet for breakfast.

His mandibles quirked upward, and he turned off the sink, hoisted up the kettle, and carried it over to the stovetop. “Okay, Tanni, I’m done in here,” he called. “Can you bring me my cloak, please?”

An excited chirp and a scrabbling of toe-claws on the floor was the only response he got, and his smile grew. He set the kettle down, then lumbered for the main room, a sense of contentment replacing the existential crisis. If this was what had happened after eleven short years, well, that suited him just fine.


End file.
